RAPE OR PASSION - Chapter 22

The house in Clacton was sold fairly quickly and the long boring wait for solicitors to do their thing ensued like a tortoise. The house was completed and I bemused myself with the thought that I had lived with it as a semi building site for so many years and now that it was all lovely I was leaving!
Am I my own worst enemy or is it itchy gypsy feet?

We planned a huge party at Reg Brown's function room and he refused to charge us for it. Reg was always a really lovely guy but he too was getting jaded with Clacton. He seemed to understand that I wanted to leave for a great many reasons and he certainly made a big fuss of me with his goodbyes.

The party was tremendous and many of us poured back to our house to have one last crack at upsetting the neighbours.
There was one odd moment when Lorraine approached me to beg that she be allowed to come back to the house and I wanted to refuse but didn't. I have no idea why. Maybe I was just being nice?

The party continued until the very early hours and my heart was already going north.
A great friend had a small removals business and employed other friends of ours, so we gave them the business of storing our stuff until we were ready to move into our brand new house.

We stayed in a hotel in Dyce, close to the airport, and chose carpets and colours for the interior paintwork.
We bought a new couch and I ordered a huge amount of the fabric to make matching covers for big floor cushions that I intended to make as soon as we arrived.

The whole thing went remarkably smoothly and we actually moved in just a day or two before Tony had to go offshore again.
Our stored furniture arrived and was scattered about this astonishingly beautiful house like homeless orphans.

Slowly over the following fortnight I assembled our home, made the curtains and adapted the old cushion foam into new shapes.
When Tony returned from the rig Dan and I had it sorted out reasonably well and he complained to the new neighbours that "Fran does everything!" which I overheard and found a bit troublesome.
I had a plan, you see.
It was not a perfect plan, but it was the outline of a plan that just might work if I could persuade Tony to take it on board.

I waited for an opportunity to spend a fair bit of time outlining the ideas that I had been hatching and I was very nervous that he would do his usual trick of talking a good ball game but later, failing to play it.

I skinned up and I told Tony in no uncertain terms that I had known all along about his relationship with Lorraine. I added a fair run down of my own salaciousness and explained that I wanted to try being actually married.
Not just me to him.
No.
Him to me, was a crucially important aspect of the deal I was offering.

I was acutely aware that we knew nobody in Newmachar and that suited my plans very well. I wanted us to be the family that Dan had begged for but, up until now, was just a sham, a charade of appearances.
"From now on" I reiterated, "We can put the past behind us and rebuild our marriage anew. Nobody here knows us or what a mess we have made of things so far, do they?"

Tony was not giving me any clues about how he felt at all.
It seemed as if I was asking for an impossible dream but he suddenly admitted that he was completely surprised that I had gone through with the move to Scotland.

"What did you think I would do?" I asked confused.
"I thought you were intending to wait until we had the money from the house sale and then you would take your half and leave me!"

I must admit that it had never occurred to me to do such a thing. I was fully committed to giving Dan two decent, hardworking, loving parents even if it meant trying to rekindle feelings within myself that were long since dead.

Tony and I discussed all this as openly as we could and he promised that he would give it a chance.

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Within a month of being in Newmachar I was bored to death.
I mean I was rambling around this big beautiful house with absolutely nothing whatever to do.
It did not get messy because we had no friends visiting every day and night.
It did not get dusty like the old victorian house had done.
Everything was brand new and the only really hard labour that was required was to straighten out the garden.

Once Dan started school my days seemed interminable, especially while Tony was away on the rig.

One lunchtime I was in the local Post Office, when I spotted that the pub across the main road, Beekies Neuk, needed a lunchtime barmaid and I went straight over there to apply for the job. I needed a social life badly and so did Tony. I hoped that this would lead to us getting to know other people in the village.

I was successful in getting the job and started immediately. The hours fitted well with school hours and although I was not earning very much that wasn't the actual reason for me being there.

After only a few weeks the Manageress announced that there had been a change of management and my services were no longer required. It came as a total shock and I was really upset because so far, at least I was really enjoying meeting the local people and figuring out their strange lingo while they were having great fun jibing me for being a Londoner.

I went back to finding things to do all day at home by myself and taught myself macrame under the guidance of my new neighbour. I did a lot of reading and was continuing with my studies of Chinese philosophy.

From my vantage point at the head of the cul-de-sac I could see all the new families moving into their new homes as they were completed. For a time the street was a mud bath until the council got around to making up the road.
Slowly we recognised new faces and always made a point of trying to be very friendly.

After a period of no more than a month I got my old job back at Beekies Neuk. It seems that there had been some sort of a misunderstanding between the new owners, a consortium of four young men and the old manageress.
When I met my new boss I did not get the impression that he was particularly experienced at running bars but he did have a lot of connections within the music industry and was full of great intentions to open up the mothballed lounge bar and create a new music venue out of it.
Tony hit it off with George so well that he forgave me for being a barmaid again and even came to the pub to be sociable while I was working.

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I am struggling to tell this story because I just feel inclined to rush to the end and not tell the sorry tale in all it's technicolor disappointment.
So that is what I will do.

It did not work out as I had planned.
Tony did not stop drinking as I had hoped.
I did not feel any glimmer of happiness.
But I put on a good show.

I succeeded in everything I set out to do while I lived in Newmachar, Aberdeenshire.
Everything except the most important thing of all.

I could not fall back in love with Tony again and try as he might he just could not be faithful even if I could have paid him.
The size of my disappointment was so vast that it swallowed all my hope wholesale and without noticing I became seriously depressed.
I had a beautiful home, a Lancia sports car, Dan was in private school in the City Centre and doing very well.
I had all the trappings and comforts I could want.
I had money.
I had materialistic success, which I discovered meant absolutely nothing to me.
I was dead inside.
I was an empty shell with a carefully painted smile.

After two and half years I could stand it no more.
I left instructions with a Solicitor to sell the loveless house and split the proceeds exactly 50/50 between myself and Tony.
I packed up the trailer tent with essentials and, once again, I left Tony.
It was US Independence Day, the 4th of July 1981 and I was driving towards a future I had no energy for planning and no interest in even thinking about.
The time had come to face the harshest of facts.

You can take a horse to water.
But you cannot make him drink.